Young Canadian Teams for 2010 Chess Olympiad

WIM Yuan Yuanling (western style: WIM Yuanling Yuan) leads the Canadian's Women's Team to the 2010 Chess Olympiad.  Goddesschess was pleased to host her presence at the 90th City of Montreal Open Chess Championships held last week (September 10-12, 2010) in Montreal.  Here is an article on the Women's and Open Teams Canada sent to the 2010 Chess Olympiad:

From insidetoronto.com
TIM FORAN|
Sep 21, 2010 - 8:28 AM
North Yorkers head Canada's national chess teams

Erase the image of two crafty old men sitting across a chess board and slowly strategizing their moves. The reality of Canada's competitive game is drastically different.

Two North Yorkers, Yuanling Yuan and Mark Bluvshtein, both of whom shot to the top of Canada's rankings at age 14, will lead the country's youngest ever women's and national chess teams respectively over the next two weeks at the 39th annual Chess Olympiad, the first round of which began play Tuesday, September 21.

Yuanling Yuan, a 16-year-old high school student at Victoria Park C.I. and Canada's top rated female player at year end in both 2008 and 2009, will play "first board", or leader, for Canada's five-person women's team.

"She's the youngest first board on the women's team that Canada has ever sent," said Bob Armstrong, governor for the Chess Federation of Canada, which is one of approximately 150 federations sending their nation's top players to the Olympiad in Khanty-Mansiysk, a small city in western Siberia. The Olympiad is a biannual affair attracting the world's top talent and organized by the international chess federation FIDE. Canada's two teams are both ranked in the fifties.

Despite Yuan's age, this will actually be her second Olympiad, as she also played in the last one in 2008 in Dresden, Germany.

Leading Canada's national team this year is Mark Bluvshtein, 22, a recent York University graduate and Newtonbrook Secondary School alumnus. This will be the fifth Olympiad for Bluvshtein, who became Canada's youngest ever grandmaster at the age of 16.

International masters Thomas Roussel-Roozman, 22, Leonid Gershoy, 22, and Artiom Samsonkin, 21, round out the starting squad for the national team, while Nikolay Noritsyn, 19, is the team's reserve, a position that generally sees quite a bit of playing time, said Armstrong.

The women's team is even younger. Both starter Yelizaveta Orlova and reserve Dalia Kagramanov are only 16, while Kagramanov's older sister, Dina, another York University grad, is the "elder" on Canada's teams at the age of 24. The other starter Iulia Lacau-Rodean is 22. ...

Rest of article.

With all due respect to the chess dudes, this is Goddesschess and we concentrate on the femmes!  How did the Canadian women do?

Round 1 on 2010/09/21 at 15:00
Bo. 58 Canada (CAN) Rtg - 113 Uganda (UGA) Rtg 3½: ½
56.1 WIM Yuan Yuanling 2189 - Amoko Ivy Claire 0 1 - 0
56.2 WIM Kagramanov Dina 2086 - Mutesi Phiona 0 1 - 0
56.3 Lacau-Rodean Iulia 2024 - Kigeni Grace 0 ½ - ½
56.4 Orlova Yelizaveta 1917 - Butindo Joanitah Justine 0 1 - 0

Canada Women moved up from start rank 58th to 50th as a result of their R1 performance. 

Note:  Phiona Mutesi (see Goddesschess post) was not able to prevail against WIM Dina Kagramanov.